Unknown Worlds is celebrating this weekend's PAX East gathering by kicking off the first free weekend for Natural Selection 2, their action/strategy sequel. This will begin today at 1:00 pm EDT (17:00 UTC) and the game will go on sale at that time for 50% off as further temptation to purchase it for those who enjoy the free weekend. They celebrate the news with a Natural Selection 2 Free Weekend trailer showing off the game.

Omni wrote on Mar 21, 2013, 10:16:I don't think I will destroy my good memoires I had from playing this back in the days when it was a mod.

The wizard lost he's magic stick.

Having played this before it was cool, you and your hipster pals will have plenty of time to listen to phonographs.

This has nothing to do with that. Natural Selection 2 is a different game from Natural Selection in many respects and these two games have a different overall "feeling" to them.

I played for a bit, I didn't find it shockingly different. Some changes, but overall I knew what I was doing from my memories of the old MOD.

There are a lot of small differences.- As a marine you now buy your weapons yourself.- The aliens have a commander now.- The structures of the aliens have been redesigned in some ways, not only how they work but also sometimes what they do- The attacks of the aliens have been redesigned- The blink of the fade is different now, it much more resembles how the fade blinked in 1.04, i.e. before the change in 2.0- The aliens, most notably the skulks, cannot bunnyhop anymore- There is now the nanogrid or powergrid or whatever it is called. In some way it limits/changes how the marines can build structures- There is now dynamic infestation- Flamethrower! Yay! - The grenadelauncher is now mounted to the lmg! Nay! - I am not sure about this one but are there still stims in there? I know that there are personal shields but what about the stim packs or adrenalin packs that were introduced in 3.0?- The marines now have a melee attack for their lmg :/- And the marines can sprint- The onos doesn't have devour anymore, right? At least I have never seen it. Kinda sucks, because this was the go to way to get rid of Heavy Armour- The heavy armour is sort of a really small mech now instead of a power armoured suit :/

SykesN. wrote on Mar 21, 2013, 16:14:Just played a few games (1st time) and the other players where dare I say..nice?! Asking the new players if they had any questions and not hoping all over you cause you did something stupid. I'm impressed. I can't tell you the last time I played an online game that's been out for awhile and not been told all the awfully things they've done to my mother.

Same here, just played a couple maps. Peeps were friendly enough, but I don't let that kind of stuff bother me anyways.

Man, my twitch skills have gone to crap... been playing to many ARPG's and CIV type games lately. My Skulk skillz suck bad.. lol.

Just played a few games (1st time) and the other players where dare I say..nice?! Asking the new players if they had any questions and not hoping all over you cause you did something stupid. I'm impressed. I can't tell you the last time I played an online game that's been out for awhile and not been told all the awfully things they've done to my mother.

Omni wrote on Mar 21, 2013, 10:16:I don't think I will destroy my good memoires I had from playing this back in the days when it was a mod.

The wizard lost he's magic stick.

Didn't destroy all those thousands of hours worth of NS1 memories. :p

In a way it is less competitive because they removed features like bunny-hopping, sliding along the walls to gain speed, duck walking for silence etc. (although they already removed some of these "features" in 3.0) but I have a feeling that Natural Selection 2 is the game they (or at least Flayra) always wanted to make.This dark, atmospheric, asymmetric rts shooter where you always have to be careful.

The performance is not great though, as already mentioned. And for some reason the netcode is terrible, even worse than in NS1. There were instances where I ran against a motionless marine and bit him point blank, i.e. no way I could have missed and only half of my bites actually did any damage. We even had a comparable latency of under 50ms but the server dropped the packets anyway, for some reason. Of course that can happen from time to time but with this game it happens quite often.

Loved the original, loved it to death. Tried to do the same with the sequel but it was not meant to be. :/I wouldn't say that it's unbalanced but these "lag" issues ruin all the fun for me.Still a great game, great concept and great execution. The technical is lacking, though.

TychoCelchuuu wrote on Mar 21, 2013, 11:09:This game owns. Everyone should buy it, or at least try it on sale. It's a very complicated game (much more complicated than Battlefield: IN SPACE! - BF games don't have much strategy other than "go around the side and capture the points behind the enemy") so if you find yourself getting confused, check out my comprehensive guide to help ease you in to the game.

This game owns. Everyone should buy it, or at least try it on sale. It's a very complicated game (much more complicated than Battlefield: IN SPACE! - BF games don't have much strategy other than "go around the side and capture the points behind the enemy") so if you find yourself getting confused, check out my comprehensive guide to help ease you in to the game.

This is just what I have been waiting for on NS2. I really had fun with the mod, but was unsure of this release. Getting to actually try it to decide is perfect. I had just seen too many mixed comments / reviews to buy it without a test.

Maybe when they add some more open maps or something....feels like stuff is missing. Like tanks, vehicles and stuff....

Yeah let's turn this completely unique game into Battlefield: IN SPACEEEEEE.

Been months since I stopped playing due to abysmal performance and really awful balancing.

What the hell are you talking about? This is a poor man's BATTLEFIELD in space already! The base building commander mechanic just screams to be used ala Starcraft with all the units and a proper battlefield tactics that entails.

I have had no problems with performance, although Ive played too little to notice balancing issues...